The Marble
by DarkRose3
Summary: A parody of John Steinbeck's "The Pearl" dedicated to all who were forced to read it. If you didn't get the book, I guarantee you'll get this or I'll eat worms... Dancing, Harry Potter and Kaepora Gaebora appearances, and Squeaky Toys of Doom!
1. The Squeaky Crab Toy of Evil

The Marble  
  
Author's Note: I apologize if you read John Steinbeck's "The Pearl" and liked it, and find some of this content offensive. I in no way mean any harm to The Pearl and all that lies within its pages or its loyal fans.  
  
Disclaimer: I don't own any of this. None of Steinbeck's characters/events/whatever else belong to me, nor does the "Chickens on Vacation" song or the Harry Potter theme. But the Squeaky Crab Toy of Evil is all mine…(actually Kavi made that part up, but he "gave" it to me and he's my tree monkey anyways)  
  
Onik awoke in the darkness. He lay there for a while, thinking about stuff. And he thought about his pitiful career as a fisherman/pearl diver (if only he hadn't gone into the late-90s trend and tried to make a web business). And he thought about why Juana was awake whenever he was (ESP? Is there something he should know?). And he thought about fixing his roof, and he decided he would say he was too poor to. And he thought about whether or not he looked buff enough on the cover of his book.   
  
In a few minutes the sun would come up and, like he was supposed to, he would go see the sunrise and then go back inside. He knew he should - after all, he had read "The Pearl". But he was too lazy.   
  
So he just turned around and watched his wife Anuaj. She was playing with their baby, Coyote. He guessed she would eventually pick him up and put him in her shawl, because she always did. He didn't understand that - actually, after the first couple of chapters it got kind of annoying.   
  
The Show Tune of Family (actually the Chickens on Vacation song) played in Onik's ears. Eventually, as all show tunes do, it got stuck in his head, and he started humming it to himself. "Chickens on vacation/ Flying through the sky/ Going to California in Mid-July…"  
  
Eventually he, Anuaj, and Coyote were all up and dancing, singing, and generally being rather musical. "Chickens on a plane/ Going through the air," Coyote sang in an alto (quite nicely, I might add). "From a farm in Delaware," Anuaj continued with a broad wink at the packed theater audience. "From a farm in Del-a-WARE!!!" Onik finished. They bowed to thunderous applause, and then went back to doing whatever they were supposed to be doing.  
  
Then, suddenly, a change in the morning occurred. The "Chickens on Vacation" song was slowly replaced by something else… some sort of twisted, demented carnival music… the song of Evil… the Harry Potter theme!!!  
  
(Harry Potter burst into Onik's hut. "Hey! That's not very nice!" he protested rather indignantly. From next to Onik a random tree monkey named Kavi replied, "Well, my wizardish friend, you have to admit it fits really really well there." And Harry shrugged, agreed, and walked out of the hut quite cheerfully. Onik, Anuaj, and Kavi all looked at each other and declared, "Sillybritishpansy.")  
  
The Song of Evil had overtaken the Song of Family. Onik leapt suddenly to his feet (it was fun!) and Anuaj gasped when, at the same time, they noticed the Squeaky Crab Toy dangling from Coyote's four-poster bed! With over-dramaticness oozing out his ears, Onik rose to meet the enemy, the squeaky threat to his family. But the squeaky toy could sense the danger. And Onik thought, "Oh no! If I try to swat it now, it'll fly away before I can get it!"   
  
Then, out of nowhere, Anuaj handed him a shiny black Oxford. Onik smiled and raised the random Oxford to violently kill the Squeaky Crab Toy and finally get the Harry Potter theme out of his head. Suddenly, Coyote pulled a pretty gold tassel on his bed and the Crab Toy flew away, letting out a horrifying squeak!!!!!!!  
"Rage built up" within Onik (after all, he very well couldn't afford anger management classes) and he caught the toy and squished it with the random Oxford, then repeated the process between his hands and into the dirt floor of the hut. He and Anuaj exchanged a glance, and Onik made a face. "Ew…. Squeaky toy guts!"  
  
By that time, the terrifying squeaks had attracted the neighbors, including Onik's brother Tommybaby and his wife (whose name nobody can seem to pronounce so it's ridiculous to even try. We'll just call her Appalachia - it's close enough, eh?) and a whole mob of other random nosy villagers.  
  
Anuaj saw Coyote's liver begin to swell. "Call 9-1-1!… No, wait, we don't have phones. Go find a blue flower with red thorns!… Oh, no, that won't help. Can we get Harry Potter back to work a charm? No? Uh… does anyone know CPR?"  
  
"Why don't we go see the doctor?" Onik suggested in a stage whisper, hiding a copy of "The Pearl" behind his back.  
  
"Let's go see the doctor," Anuaj suggested firmly. Putting Coyote in her hammock-shawl, she strode out the door, and Onik followed. So, of course, did the rest of the villagers. It was a regular parade, with balloons and marching bands and floats, and Appalachia even twirled a baton.  
  
As they were leaving the cluster of huts, Tommybaby called out, "No! Something tells me we're going to march the whole village there, and it's going to take forever, and it'll take up almost ten very boring pages of just walking around, and then there'll be more boring descriptions of the doctor, and he won't treat little Coyote anyways, and we'll all go home dejected and worried, and Onik will punch a gate and split his knuckles because, man, that guy needs anger management."  
  
But nobody listened. Older brothers were always too bossy anyways.  
  
So the residents of the little village paraded into Pa Laz(y). And they went past the gilded gates of the fair town. And they paraded through the streets paved with pesos. And they left behind too much confetti to count. And they went past the pretty houses with flowers and birds and if you'd read you know the rest. And the beggars watched, and Kino noticed that even the "poor" of this place had sparkling white teeth.  
  
Anyways, they got to the doctor's house.  
  
Onik knocked on the door and it opened. They could sorta see into the doorway, and they saw a random owl, about two feet tall and bright brown, sitting on a pedestal inside, wearing a T-shirt that said, "I AM NOT A SYMBOL". "What do you-o-o-oot want?" the random owl questioned.   
  
Onik did a double take. "You're a random pet!! You're not supposed to talk!"  
  
The owl shrugged as best he could. "This is a fanfic parody of a parable. All things are possible." He shrugged again. "It's all Kavi and his animal rights. You'd be talking to the real servant if he was here, but he's out sick."  
  
"Oh," Onik said. He never was too quick. "Well, er…" He glanced at his copy of "The Pearl". "Oh yeah…uh… The little one has been poisoned by the Squeaky Crab Toy. He requires the skill of a healer."   
  
"I go to inform myself," the owl replied, and it was the first time in this fic something was true to the book.  
  
"That doesn't make sense, and we all know it," Anuaj pointed out. The owl shrugged, glancing about nervously, and flapped noisily out of the doorway.   
  
They waited a while.  
  
Then the owl was back.  
  
"Doc's not here right now. Sorry. Go away," the owl said, slamming the door in his face rather rudely. The camera took an aerial view and zoomed out further and further and further and further as Onik shouted, "Noooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!" Then he punched the gate and split his knuckles. For a moment he looked at his blood in dull amazement, and then he screamed, "Ew! Blood! Help! I'm bleeding! Ah! I'm going to lose all my blood! Ew! Help!"  
  
Anuaj shrugged. Coyote stopped crying to stare. "Well, that was stupid," the baby whispered behind his hand to Anuaj, and she nodded.   
  
"Told you so," Tommybaby said. And they went back home.  
  
Well, there it is. All of Chapter One parody-ized. Chapter Two should be on the way - Onik finds the Marble of the World, Harry Potter pays another visit, and an oyster has his own musical solo!!! Special Thanks are due to Sasery since she helped come up with this idea.  
  
Look into my eyes. Watch the spinning coin of gold, and you shall do as you are told.  
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	2. Olly saves the day again!

The Marble

Author's Note: The madness is back with a vengeance! Poor Johnny S… he must be turning in his grave (he is dead now, isn't he?) 

Disclaimer: I don't own any of The Pearl-ish-ness, Harry Potter, the Disney-fied Little Mermaid, or anything else that's obviously not mine… But I did own the 20 packs of smarties I ate before writing this! (Ok, so they were my brothers')…

"When we last left our heroes, Coyote had a close encounter with the Squeaky Crab Toy and contracted a swelling liver, there was a parade, the anonymous doctor was being, well, anonymous, and Kino demonstrated his anger-management problems!"

"Since when did we get an announcer?" Tommybaby asked, looking up at the sky.

"All good fics have Random Disembodied Voices. It is good," Onik said. (Did that seem repetitive to you readers as well? Man, and that was a direct quote, too…)

"Now, we find our lovable, poverty-stricken Native-Western-Mexico-American friends randomly at the beach. What will happen to them? What wildlife will they encounter? What will they find? Will Coyote's liver un-swell? Is un-swell a word? Will -". Suddenly there was a loud noise from the sky like a pile of algebra books smacking against a head at a 127-degree angle. And the Random Disembodied Voice was no more, and it was good.

Anyways, Onik & Co. were walking along the beach (Anuaj carrying Coyote in her shawl.) They passed some random pigs and dogs scavenging on the beach. "Stupid random pigs and dogs," Onik muttered as one of then tried to pig out on his tattered pants. 

"No, Onik, don't say such a thing! One, it's bad luck, and two - Don't you see? The pigs and dogs are a symbol! They represent the common man in a struggle to survive in this brutal world we live in!" Anuaj exclaimed, sighing with the artistic beauty of it. Onik gave her "the look" (O_o) She shrugged.

Suddenly there was a light from up above. They both looked up and saw a face projected in the clouds - the face of that "champion of the weak and downtrodden" - the Ghost of John Steinbeck! "Actually, those are just random pigs and dogs!"

"Stupid random pigs and dogs," Onik muttered. Anuaj looked sheepish. "Now what?"

"Uh…….." The Ghost of John Steinbeck said helpfully. He checked his copy of "The Pearl". "Oh! Ok. Now you have to go canoeing." Then, slowly, the Ghost of John Steinbeck faded away. 

Anuaj and Onik looked at each other, shrugged, and got in the canoe, at which point I have to put in a twenty-page description of the Gulf of California. Ahem… The seaweed was swaying, the sand-dwellers were bubbling, the crabs…… 

Well, the crabs weren't there. So Kavi had to go get the next best thing (in his tree-monkey-ish opinion) Sebastian from "The Little Mermaid"! 

Sebastian checked his copy of "The Pearl" and noticed that there was mention of a "Song of the Undersea". He decided he would take the initiative himself.

Enough said.

_Under the sea [under the sea]_

Under the sea [under the sea]

So much to see there

So much to be there

………………..

"What have they got, a lot of sand? We got a hot Caribbean band!" Onik crooned. Anuaj, not quite understanding, looked around to see where the Caribbean band was. She didn't see it. But she did see something else… Something small and glittery lying in the sand… 

"Onik…… Look…"

Onik did so, and slowly he picked the small, glittery random object up. It was like the size of his palm, its glass surface hardly chipped or scratched, with little pieces of confetti and glitter embedded inside that little bluish swirl. It was…… a marble…..

It was the Marble of the World.

Suddenly, a rather ordinary random oyster leapt out of the Disney-fied Gulf of California and landed right in front of Onik. "How dare you! How dare you just leave me out of all this! I'm the Oyster! The Oyster of the World! I'm very important!"

"No, you're not," said Kavi, randomly inserting himself into the conversation since he wasn't supposed to really even be in this chapter (or any of the others, for that matter…)

"Oh yes I am! (stupid tree monkeys!) I happen to be a hugely important character! Yes, a character! This is a conflict of character versus _character_, not character vs. nature! OYSTERS HAVE FEELINGS TOO, YOU KNOW!!!" The oyster had worked himself up so much, he was singing. "Nobody understands… Nobody cares… Nobody bothers with a shellfish like me…"

Onik, Anuaj, Kavi, and Coyote gave the oyster "the look" (O_o). It stopped raving, but managed to get in, "Well, I have the Pearl of the World, if you want it."

"Who cares about some dumb old pearl?," Onik dismissed haughtily. "We have The Marble now. And now we are rich, and all our problems will be solved even though we all know that sounds too good to be true, and we'll get too many material possessions, and everyone will love us, and we'll end up all getting shot in the head at the end anyways, and…"

"And Coyote will be healed by magic?" Anuaj suggested.

"Did someone say magic?" a random disembodied voice called. Then, next to the Oyster of the World, a puff of red and gold smoke formed and out stepped…

"Harry?" Anuaj exclaimed. "It's Harry! The boy who lived! He's come to save Coyote!"

And it was. Only he seemed a little shorter, and he had randomly curled his hair, and wasn't wearing any shiny black shoes.

"I'm here to stop Coyote's swelling liver, since there was no rational explanation for it in the book," Harry announced. He pointed his wand at Coyote's liver and muttered a random, Latin-sounding word. There was a big poof of magical smoke. And Coyote started to cry again.

"Now look what you've done! You Sillybritishpansy! You didn't cure Coyote! You call yourself a wizard? And _why _is your hair _curly_? Stop trying to be Bilbo Baggins - I mean, just because the director of your movies gave you Sting, made you go through Mirkwood, had an eagle rescue you, and forced you to fight a troll _doesn't _give you the right to steal Tail's part!" Anuaj shouted. 

Harry gave her "the look" (O_o). And Anuaj was quiet, and it was good.

But all this nonsense still hadn't cured Coyote, so Kavi decided to bring in the best wizard of all time… And with another poof of smoke, a tall dude with a rather dumb haircut and a black turtleneck stepped into the chaos. Our heroes (and our villains) maintained a revered silence.

"Hello. Don't worry, I'm a Quidditch captain. I can do anything. (in a Scottish/Irish accent)" Oliver Wood assured Anuaj. He pointed his wand and muttered a different Latin-sounding word. And Coyote was miraculously cured. "There. That ought to do it. (in a Scottish/Irish accent)" The random pigs and dogs on the beach applauded, and Olly bowed (in a Scottish/Irish accent). 

"Thanks. I was wondering how exactly that was supposed to happen," Onik said.

"You're welcome (in a Scottish/Irish accent)," Olly replied. "Oh, and by the way, Harry, I think Anuaj did have sort of a point about the whole hobbit thing…"

Harry looked from the right to the left, realizing he was outnumbered. Then he slipped a cheesy gold-colored ring on his finger and disappeared. Olly sighed, disappearing as well, "Sillybritishpansy (in a Scottish/Irish accent)."

And then Kino got an urge to stand up. He held the Marble of the World over his head, and howled. And everyone in the canoes around them stared, and wondered what Kino was doing, and …… it was good.

………………………………...................................................................................................................

Kwee! Okay, that's all for Chapter Two. Next time - what Kino will buy with the Marble of the World, the real truth about the doctor, and the return of the Random Disembodied Voice! And Chapter Leal is coming - I just need suggestions for what Kino would buy with the Marble. Suggestions would be nice… *hint hint*

Thank you to everyone who reviewed, and everyone who is going to review, and everyone that reviewed in parallel universes! Ok, admit it. You want to be on one of those lists. It is, after all, a very high honor. Don't worry - it's easy! Just hit that little button on the bottom that says "Send Review - Go" and type me a review! Actually, you'd better - I've got an angry Oyster of the World here, and I'm not afraid to use it!!!


	3. Elvis?

The Marble

Author's Note: mwahaha! It's back! Sorry for the delay - I kinda forgot some of the plot after we had to hand our copies of The Pearl back in. So from now on, it might be even _more _random……

"A town is like a colonial animal.

"What the _halibut_ is that supposed to mean, anyways? Ok, I get the simile part, and the animal part… maybe. But what is the point of the 'colonial'-ness? "A town is like a royal/regal/imposing animal…"

"Didn't we get rid of him last chapter?" Anuaj asked Onik, sighing. 

"Yes. 'The Random Disembodied Voice was no more, and it was good'…. Got any algebra books?"

"No homework this weekend," Kavi apologized. "Let's get Olly."

There was a poof of magical red and gold smoke, and a tall wizardly dude in a black turtleneck appeared. He waved his wand and said a random Latin-sounding word (in a Scottish/Irish accent). And the announcer… was no more. (Unless you chillens _want _me to bring him back again… o_O)

"Thanks Olly," Kavi said. "N'ori loves you."

Now, to make up for lost time… The town was like a big fat ol' aminal. Everyone in it was a big gossip, and they spread word of the discovery of The Marble of the World. They all wanted it for themselves for various reasons. Of course, Onik and Anuaj were oblivious and naïve due to a secret plot to gain sympathy. So, they pretended not to see past everyone's lies and figured that everybody was genuinely happy for them. The end.

Sitting around the campfire, Onik looked into the Marble and thought of what he would buy with it. This was very hard for him, as it required thought. So he thought.

And he thought.

And he thought.

And he thought.

And he thought.

And he thought.

And he thought.

And he thought.

And he thought.

And finally, when the rest of the people were about to lose their already short attention spans, he said, "I…" Everyone looked up expectantly.

"I will buy a big fork… no. A _squirt gun_." Everyone gasped. Only the very very wealthy had squirt guns. 

"And," Onik continued, looking at Anuaj, "I will buy a new skirt for Anuaj. You know, the kind that, like, goes down to like, a little past your knees and it's all, like, jeans only like, patched and it looks so totally like cool and like oh my gods! And like, she can wear it and everyone can be like so jealous and like, it'll be like…"

Onik trailed off, realizing that everyone else was giving him "the look" (O_o). He cleared his throat.

"And," he finished awkwardly, "My son… will have an education. He will go to clown school. He will come back and tell us all that he knows, so that we may all learn the clownish ways."

This was too much for some of the villagers. Imagine… clown school! Appalachia (Tommybaby's wife) actually fainted. "Is there a doctor in the house? Is there a doctor in the house?" Tommybaby called out.

And, out of complete randomness popped… the King of all Kings of all Rock and Roll… the one… the only… Elvis himself!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

*And the readers shake their heads and wonder, where the _halibut_ does all this nonsense come from???*

Elvis danced very dramatically over to Appalachia. "Yes, yes, I am a doctor," he sang. In fact, he was the doctor. You know, the one from the village who owned the random owl. But he decided to ignore Appalachia and went straight to the couple who owned the hut.

Elvis, too, had learned about Onik's Marble, and thought it would be a fine thing to have. So he said, "I'm sorry I couldn't see yer baby before… I was away talkin' to my… alien friends. Anyway, I think he might be sick." He danced over to where Coyote was, and pulled his eyelid down. Ow! Didn't anyone consider the fact that that might hurt that poor baby?

He nodded knowingly. "Yup. He's sick all right, baby. Look at that - bluer than blue suede shoes."

"Oh my," Anuaj said.

"Not to worry, liddle lady," Elvis assured her, rhinestones flashing. "I'll just sing him a song and he'll be better." And Elvis sang, and it was not so good.

Coyote started to cry.

"Oh my," Anuaj said.

"There, see. That's him workin' against the poison. Nuthin' to worry about." The hut burst into cheers and swoons.

"Thank you, thank you very much," Elvis said, and danced out of the hut.

***************************************************************

Kwee! There, I think that was enough to sufficiently disturb you. So please review. Kwee…. *can't think of any good review-type threats due to the hour of night* er…… Suggestions would be helpful. Not that I'm not running out of ideas, but I know that some other people have heads as messed up as mine, and two ideas are better than non- I mean, one! *tips purple top hat and flourishes cape* Until we meet again…..


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